Not Tonight
by Waldo
Summary: It seems like that in every fic ever written, Trip is always ready for sex. But even he has nights where all he wants to do is crawl in bed and sleep.


**Title: **Not Tonight  
**Author**: Waldo.  
**Pairing**: Tucker/Archer  
**Rating:** M  
**Summary: **It seems like that in every fic ever written, Trip is always ready for sex. But even he has nights where all he wants to do is crawl in bed and sleep.

**Not Tonight**

**By: Waldo.**

Trip was beginning to think the credits would never roll. He'd let Jon talk him into going to the movie, but his heart just wasn't in it. He was shocked to find himself more annoyed than encouraged when Jon slid one hand along the small of his back and rested it on his hip, but he didn't say anything or move.

They both squinted when the lights came up and Trip decided then and there that he was assigning someone to put a dimmer switch on that panel the next morning and a big sign that said, "Raise lights slowly after movies."

He stretched a crick out of his neck as he stood, feeling miserable that he felt grateful to see Travis waving to get the captain's attention. When Jon moved to see what he needed, Trip ducked into the hall.

While waiting for the turbolift, he heard the captain jog to catch up to him. "Wanna come back for a beer?" Jon asked brightly.

Trip struggled to keep the flash of panic off his face. A beer almost never meant just a beer anymore and while he wouldn't change his relationship with the captain for anything, all he really wanted that evening was to go to sleep. He'd never had to tell Jon "not tonight" and he wasn't really sure how. Although it hadn't happened often, Jon tended towards the "I've got a headache line," which annoyed Trip to no end. He'd hoped that their relationship was solid enough to not need the pat lines and lame excuses. He honestly didn't mind being asked to stick a pin in it - metaphorically speaking. But now, for the first time, as the person who needed to give the brush off, he realized that it was much harder to say "I just don't want to" than he'd thought it would be.

He didn't answer fast enough. "Come on," Archer encouraged.

Trip shrugged. "Yeah. Sure."

He followed Archer quietly into the lift and down to his quarters. Once inside, Archer pulled out the promised beers and began pouring them into glasses while Trip grabbed a dog biscuit and tossed it to Porthos who swallowed it quickly and then put his front feet on Trip's knees and stretched his back, looking for more. Trip brushed his hands together as he'd seen the captain do before. "No more." Porthos put his feet back down, trotted over to his pillow and flopped down.

"Here," Archer handed Trip his beer. "You spoil him, you know."

Trip grinned, not even bothering to argue. He took a large swallow of his beer and set the glass down on the table. Then, taking Porthos' idea, he braced his hands on the wall and stretched his own back out.

Jon slipped up behind him and slid his hands up Trips rib cage and around over his chest, hooking his fingers over Trip's shoulders, hugging him from behind. "Want a back rub?"

Trip dropped his head between his arms and let out his breath in a huff, but didn't say anything.

Archer turned him around. "Trip, what's wrong? You've been awfully quiet tonight."

Trip dropped his head onto Archer's shoulder and sighed again. "I'm sorry. It's been a long day."

Archer pulled Trip into a proper hug. "Is that all?"

Trip pulled back to look at Archer in surprise. "Yeah… what else would it be?"

Archer shrugged. "You've been keeping me at arm's length all night. I thought maybe I did something."

Trip rubbed his hands over his face. He couldn't win for losing. "I'm really just tired. Today was… long… I just wasn't sure how to tell you… I'm tired, Jon."

Archer couldn't help but grin. "So you aren't that old-style battery bunny. You really think I'd be upset about that?"

"I didn't think you'd be exactly thrilled."

"Well, honestly, I'm not. I was hoping…" Archer trailed off with a fill-in-the-blank look and Trip had to smile at Archer's perennial inability to actually talk about having sex in anything but the most euphemistic way - and then only when he couldn't avoid it all together. "But it's not like I've never told you I wasn't up to it." Archer raised an eyebrow. "So to speak."

Trip leaned in to hug him again. "I was just afraid I'd make you think… well, what I apparently ended up making you think anyway."

Archer shrugged. "Neither of us has ever been very good at relationships and we don't want to screw this up. We're learning. It's okay. It's a fairy tale to think that we'll both be in the mood at the exact same times all the time."

Trip nodded and fell onto the sofa behind him. Archer handed him his beer and he took a long, steadying drink.

"You look tired," Archer commented as he perched on the edge of his bed. It had been an amazingly boring day, all said, for Enterprise. No Suliban, no Klingons, no shuttle disasters, no distress calls… Yet Trip looked more tired than Archer could ever remember seeing him, excepting various incidents that landed the engineer in sickbay. "Wanna stay anyway?" He honestly wasn't sure Trip could make it back to his quarters under his own power.

"You don't mind?" Trip verified.

"'Course not. Come on. Finish that and then we'll crawl in bed and you can tell me why today was so hellacious." Archer drained his own beer and went to the closet and pulled out two pairs of pajama bottoms and two clean t-shirts. He tossed a set to Trip and then changed out of his own uniform. He put out a fresh bowl of water for Porthos and turned back the covers while Trip got changed.

They crawled under the covers and Archer reached up to slap the light switch. "So… on a day where we did nothing but cover about five and a half light years, why was today so long?"

Trip snuggled his back into Archer's front, wiggling until he was comfortable and Jon was forced to wrap an arm around his waist to hold him still. "Just lots of little stuff. You got the report on the torpedo bay malfunction. At oh-four-hundred they wake up both me and Malcolm to come down and see why the computer's sayin' the torpedo bays were open, when the visual inspection clearly showed that they weren't. Took us about an hour to find the blown relay to the computer. So now it's about five-thirty and there's no point in goin' back to bed, because we'd just have to get up in like an hour anyway. So I go down to Engineering just in time to find out that the rumors I've been hearing about Markum and Sullivan are true . They're either both suffering from a massive crush on the other or in about a week I'm going to have to start asking Malcolm where a person would hide a body on this ship."

Archer laughed. He'd heard about the two engineers from gamma shift himself and he wasn't sure which way it would play out.

"They were goin' at it but good and I had to physically get between them to keep Sullivan from knocking Markum's head off. So now I have to redo all of next month's duty rosters to keep them from being on the same shift when it's avoidable."

Archer reached up and began gently toying with Trip's hair, knowing more than a few ways to calm his distraught engineer. "Before you do that, I'll call them both in and see if we can't get to the bottom of this. I'll get back to you tomorrow, okay?"

Trip nodded. "Thanks. I've tried talking to them both, but nothin's changed." Trip shifted onto his back, looking at his lover. "And then on top of having a shift and a half, I get a letter from home."

In the dim light Archer could see Trip's face fall even further. Trip spent his entire ration of com-time, and if Hoshi was to be believed, half of Malcolm's, every month keeping up with his family. A letter from home was usually enough to have him whistling in the halls for three days.

"Ya know that I'm the oldest, Elizabeth's the baby, but between us is Victoria. She's already got a son and I found out tonight that she's pregnant again. Due in March, they're pretty sure it's a girl. And I'm happy for her, I really am. She always wanted a girl. But who knows how long it's gonna be before I get to see her. I don't know… I knew what I was signing on for when I started on the Warp 5 project, but I guess it just sort of hit me today that I'm missin' out on some stuff at home." Trip took a deep breath. "Sorry it's made me so cranky."

Jon rolled him onto his side and gathered him into his arms, not entirely sure what to say. There had been any number of times when he'd envied Trip's large and gregarious family. He'd met most of them and both Trip's mom and Victoria had threatened to adopt him when they figured out that he didn't have any family left. But he never realized how much Earth as "home" wasn't so important to him. He wasn't missing anything back there. Not like Trip who had two parents, two younger sisters, a younger brother, a nephew and soon a niece.

Before Archer could come up with anything to say, Trip was hugging him fiercely. "Guess in some ways it's made me realize how much I need you. And I was pretty worried that I'd screw that up tonight. Sorry."

Jon kissed his head. "Nothing to be sorry for. It's okay." He wished he had something more to say.

"Victoria says she's going to stick with the family tradition and name the baby Diana. Says if the boys get to do the first, second, third thing, that the girls are just gonna need a tradition of their own," Trip commented off-handedly.

"You're mom has a peculiar fascination with British royalty. Charles, Victoria, James and Elizabeth. How'd your nephew escape?"

"Peter? He didn't, exactly. Vicky says she just branched off - went with Russian royalty." Trip was kicking and stretching as he mumbled into the pillows.

Archer had long ago learned that that meant Trip was close to dropping off. He leaned over and kissed his temple. "'Night Trip."

"Night," Trip mumbled before turning almost all the way on to his stomach - the way he usually slept.

Archer waited until Trip's breathing leveled off before gently covering Trip's ear with his hand. "Computer, reset alarm for oh-ten-hundred." He knew his own internal clock would get him up before his shift started and Hess could use the experience of running the morning staff meeting and assigning engineers to their tasks for the day. He looked down at Trip's face, much more relaxed now that he was catching up on his lost sleep. "In fact," he said to the computer, "Cancel the alarm all together."


End file.
